Folk Art interns will start similar markets in Africa

The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market just wrapped up its fourth year and had more than 17,000 visitors, a 22 percent increase from last year. It's been more successful than its organizers ever dreamed possible. And now that success may well be exported to southern Africa.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which has provided $352,000 to the Folk Art Market since its inception, initiated a program this year to bring four interns from southern Africa to the Market with the idea of creating markets in their own countries. The program is part of a new $990,000 grant Kellogg gave to the Market.

The interns attended training sessions and the tradebuyers' showcase, where wholesalers place orders with artists. They also worked as artists' assistants.

The training impressed Mahaliah Gillian Kowa, who is working in South Africa, to create the Africa! Celebrate! Festival, a celebration similar to the Folk Art Market.

"From here they can be entrepreneurs," she says. "That is key."

Ahdina Zunkel, the intern coordinator for the Folk Art Market, says during the pre-Market training, artists learn to market their goods and about exporting and dealing with middlemen.

"They learn when they make that basket, where it goes, how it ends up in a gallery or in a shop and why it's five times that price," Zunkel says.

Chila Smith Lino, who works with CEDARTE to promote artisans in Mozambique, likes the fact that artisans meet buyers at the Market face to face, with no middlemen. It inspires buyers to purchase more and the interaction empowers the artists, she says.

Nomvula Mashoai-Cook, who leads the board of the Craft Council of South Africa, sees cultural heritage as a means for sustainable job creation and economic development. She was impressed with the Folk Art Market's infrastructure, which brought more than 150 artists from 13 countries this year.

"I think there is a lot we will be able to look at and take back with us to make it work for the southern region of Africa," she says. "For these markets to be successful, they also ought to take on their own character, depending on the country."

The Kellogg grant came at a perfect time, she added. South Africa will host the World Cup in 2010, a huge event for soccer fans worldwide.

"If we were to have this market in 2009, it would be a breakthrough," she says.

Jane Parsons, who opened a craft manufacturing outlet called Limited Edition in Zimbabwe, wants to establish a craft market at the Trans-frontier National Park, also called the Peace Park, a massive game reserve in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. She likes the Folk Art Market focus on tribal and rural art traditions.

"Artists here are from some areas where a certain craft or technique has died out and now it's being re-birthed," Parsons says.

The interns see the potential of such markets to counter the impacts of globalization that encourage people to abandon traditional arts and culture and leave their families to seek jobs in the burgeoning cities of the developing world.

"If we were to support this initiative it really would put our master crafters, our culture bearers, at ease when they begin to see that there is a structure that is now looking at them seriously to promote what they are so talented at producing," says Mashoai-Cook. "It helps the countries grow, the regions grow."

The program is in line with Kellogg's vision of turning art and arts into a wealth-creation tool in regions, according to a summary from the Foundation. Kellogg has already done work in southern Africa with artisans and Foundation officials say the livelihoods of artisans and communities "have been transformed significantly and overwhelmingly in some cases."

The interns will return next year to learn the nuts and bolts of producing the Market. Zunkel will travel to South Africa in September to work with the interns on finding artists for the Folk Art Market and to begin planning events in that region.